CHAPTER 34 #3
“Her terror made you both certain,” Veyra concluded. “Souls cannot be bonded whilst harbouring mistrust–”
“No! I already – I already knew I cared for her, before then.” Sebastian was shouting now. “I didn’t need – she didn’t need–”
“It would not have been enough,” Veyra said calmly.
Sebastian jerked his hand away from Kara like it burned him. She actually gasped. He never pulled away from her like that.
“You don’t know that,” Sebastian said angrily.
“I do,” Veyra said solemnly. “We knew the Arcanth was calling. We felt it stir – crimson and emerald leaping as one. We had not seen that in centuries. Not in texts, not in visions. We did not yet know what it meant, but we knew it was a beginning. And then... we saw you.”
Her gaze lingered on Kara, then Sebastian.
“The Shards would never have answered anyone else,” she finished.
Sebastian took a hard step towards her. “If your future needed her on a pyre, then to hells with it.”
His crimson was flaring uncontrolled over him now. Gone was the steady soldier who’d guided her here, held her in her panic. His blade only inches from Veyra’s chest.
Veyra, however, did not flinch. “And yet you followed the path laid out for you, even when you believed you were rebelling. Did you not think yourself clever, stealing a Fatàn Creststone?”
His eyes narrowed.
“You cannot steal one,” she said simply. “It was left for you, as it was Written. That is the only reason you could step through our shields.”
Sebastian looked ready to throw something. Or stab someone. Kara wasn’t sure which. He took another angry step forward.
“Sebastian, stop,” Kara said, laying a hand on his arm before turning to Veyra. “You’re saying we have to Soulbond. That’s what all of this has been about?”
Veyra clasped her hands in front of her. Her face showed no sign of regret. “Yes. The Shards of the Arcanth will remain fragments without it. They require souls bound as one to unite. That is the only way.”
Sebastian sheathed his sword with a violent snap. “No.”
Kara looked up at him. “What?”
“I won’t do it,” he said, hard-edged and final. He turned away.
“Wait–” Kara said, reaching for him.
He pulled away again. “I’m not a pawn. Not theirs, not yours, not anyone’s.”
“Please–” Her voice cracked. “Just listen–”
But he was already moving towards the corridor, back to the main doors. He refused to look at her. Her heart sank.
“Whether you Soulbond or not, war is coming, Warrior,” Veyra called after him.
He didn’t stop. “I want no part of this.”
He shoved open the doors and disappeared into the night.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Kara took a step to follow him, and then froze, still trying to process everything she had just been told. The faintest sigh slipped from Veyra, like this had been expected.
“You let him go,” Kara said.
“I do not think it wise for me to try to stop him right now, do you?” Veyra replied mildly.
No. I don’t know what he’d do.
Kara dropped onto a chair at the table with Veyra, her mind racing. Both women were quiet for a long time. When Veyra spoke again, she sounded level, composed. “It was... unfortunate, the path you had to take. I wish it could have been avoided.”
“Unfortunate?” Kara let out a humourless laugh as her hands shook.
“You think your path was cruel. Perhaps it was.” Veyra took a breath. “The soldier who took you to the pyre–”
“Cade,” Kara said. She wouldn’t be afraid of his name forever.
Regret shifted in Veyra’s face. “Yes. Him, I did not See.”
“How is that possible?” Bitterness crept into her voice. “You saw everything else.”
“I am not infallible,” Veyra said. “I saw flames. I saw Sebastian reach you in time... I looked no further.”
“You saw me survive. So you stopped.”
Veyra nodded. “Your survival was certain. Though I accept it may not have felt like that to you. I learned what you had endured only afterwards. From my Watchers in the City.”
Kara said nothing.
“But this was the only path that gave you the strength to choose him,” Veyra said, “and the chance to stand against what comes.”
“You’re wrong.” Kara shook her head fiercely. “Before all this, the Shards, everything... I thought about going to Sebastian in Durent. Leaving the wedding. I wanted to.” The words sounded desperate to her own ears.
For the first time, there was pity in Veyra’s eyes. “You would not have done it. Some visions shift with possibility. That one did not.”
“But our magic sharing–”
“–is a memory you would have held close,” Veyra finished, her voice quiet, final. “Nothing more.”
“You don’t know that. I would always choose Sebastian,” Kara said angrily.
Veyra regarded her for a long moment. “Now you would, yes.”
It hit Kara with horrible clarity: wanting Sebastian had never been the problem. Acting on it had.
“And you must prove it,” Veyra told her. “He is at war with himself. He fears he is unworthy of you, unworthy of what the Arcanth demands. He will not listen to me, or to prophecy. Only you can reach him.”
Kara swallowed hard. “And if I can’t?”
Veyra’s expression never wavered. “If you and the Warrior are not bonded by the time Draknor land on our shores... Vallenna burns.”